Hello all from Worcester!

[Montyas]

Hello everyone,

I’m new to online forums altogether so not too sure what to expect. A little nervous.

I’ve had fish tanks for many years all under 90 litres, no live plants. Not come across too many problems. Although I think I may believe in a lot of misinformation. So that’s one reason I’m here.

The next reason is, in September I got a 200litre tank. Always wanted live plants, and started it off with tropica aquarium soil capped with gravel and bought a bunch of plants labelled as “easy”
I think it’s fair to say I have no idea what I am doing. Some plants have died. The rest are suffering. Diatoms have taken over everything including plants. Hair grass has taken over and the whole tank generally looks awful.

I don’t even know where to start and what questions to ask, so I will slowly start reading through threads and pick my problems apart.

 

[Michael Cosgrove]

Hi @Montyas, welcome and I hope you find all the answers. I'm following a similar process albeit with a smaller tank less than 120L.

 

[sparkyweasel]

Welcome!
I think you should get some more, fast-growing, plants in there to help the plants outcompete the algae and diatoms. I would try Egeria/Elodea and/or Hornwort, and maybe some floating plants.
When you've had a read around, if you post some details of your set-up, people will chime in with more specific advice.

 

[Simes]

Hi there

 

[Tim Harrison]

Welcome

 

[Simon Cole]

Welcome Montyas.
You need to do a 50% water change, and brush and siphon the diatoms off. It's nothing serious.
Could you tell us about the plants or share a photograph?
Could you tell us about your filter, lighting, lighting schedule, and fertilisers please?

 

[Montyas]

Apologies for the wall of text!


Tank is Fluval Roma 200

Fluval 206 canister filter and Fluval U4

I have the the original light that came with it. Says it’s 12.5W 6500K LED

I also have a eBay job light that says it’s 32w full spectrum LED.

Lights come on at 10am and off at 7pm

I’ve used some root tabs when first setting up, ingredients below


17% nitrogen (N)
9% phosphorous pentoxide (P2O5)
11% Potassium oxide (K2O)
2% Magnesium oxide (MgO)
0.01% Boron (B) 0.006% soluble in water
0.025% Copper (Cu) 0.017% soluble in water ** see note below **
0.22% Iron (Fe) of which soluble in water , chelated by EDTA 0.033%
0.03% Manganese
0.01% Molybdenum 0.008% soluble in water
0.008% Zinc


I was using Seachem Flourish excel twice a week but have stopped as i wasn’t sure if there was an abundance of nutrients.


Plants wise, I have jungle val that covers the back. Java moss. 3x Echinodorus harbii (dying off quickly) 4x Echinodorus rose (dying off quickly) Tiger lotus, Aponogeton ulvaceus, Unknown amount of Cabomba. This was doing very well but since the hairgrass started it’s pulled a lot of it apart and killed it back. And lastly I believe it’s Alternanthera reineckii.


I will try and add some more close up pictures, there is one attached to my original post but not very clear. It really does look awful so try not to judge too badly haha.


The diatoms have been around for about a month, they’re easy to clean off. I do a 50% water change each week at the moment (On a Saturday) But the algae on plants I believe is what’s killing them and that won’t come off.


Last thing is I use 50% Ro water with 50% Tap water. As my tap water contained 40ppm Nitrate. Do you think this makes a difference in a planted tank? I’ve wondered about slowly moving back to just tap water. I have 9 Rummy nose tetra, 8 cherry barbs, 6 harlequin rasbora and 4 Rams.

 

[Simon Cole]

Rams prefer slightly soft water and in Worcestershire your water is moderately hard, so I wouldn't worry about switching to 100% tap water for the time being unless you can check the pH.
I would focus on getting good Cabomba carolina plants first. They respond very well to a micro-nutrient, so I have linked to the one I used for this very purpose. Once that plant is filling your tank out it will make it very hard for diatoms to coexist, and you can get to point where you are trimming it every week and throwing any opportunistic diatoms/algae away with the top layer.
Your Echinodorus actually have new leaves. They both take quite a while to settle in and transition to an aquatic state because they are usually grown emersed by the supplier. They will respond well to carbon dioxide if you need them to grow quickly. Have you considered adding carbon dioxide? I actually started building DIY carbon dioxide reactors that ran off yeast before I started getting pressurised tanks. You probably only need a very marginal amount of carbon dioxide to get these plants to take off.
If you get good plant growth the diatoms will start to disappear, most probably.

 

[Montyas]

First of all thank you all so much for your responses. Very welcoming!

My ph is about 6.8 with half and half so yes I had best keep that as is.
I may have been a little over the top with clearing out my tank the other day. Which I regret. As I thought my Echinodorus and a few others had rotten too much I removed them and replaced them with. Elodea Densa, water wisteria (I think) and another stem plant with longer leaves. Not sure what that one was called.

I’m not too concerned about the diatoms anymore. It’s a purple/red fluffy type of algae that looks to be causing the nuisance after closer inspection.

As for C02, I have a DIY two bottle system with Baking soda and citric acid that I started yesterday with the new plants. I have used it when I first started with plants but found it suddenly dumped out a lot and leaked often. I have been looking into pressurised though.

I will give the tank some more time and see what happens and carry on reading up on algae in other threads in the mean time.